The company plans to launch these products through new partnerships with Hong Kong-based companies Coland Group and Wah Cheong.

It has established an offshoot JV with the Coland Group, which has a processing plant in mainland China,

“They will buy our salmon and process it in their plant,” Campos said, pointing out that New World Currents worked together with Coland to produce an individual frozen salmon steaks pack previously.

“When you sell head-on, you mainly sell to importers. But this will allow us to add value, entering the retail and foodservice distribution sectors,” he said.

“We are trying to develop the market to get into hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. We want to develop this market without touching our main customers,” he added, pointing out that the Chilean firm worked closely with its Chinese partners and were involved in each step of the process.

“Alliances with Chinese parties allow us to know more and penetrate the market, particularly in China,” Campos added.

New World Currents has also started a collaboration with Hong Kong-based Wah Cheong, a division of the multinational food company Kerry Group.

“With them, we created three frozen slow cooked salmon portions. They are cut in Chile and processed in HK [Hong Kong] to meet Chinese taste,” Campos said.

The packages are vacuum packed and ready to eat, being already cooked, with three different sauces.

Those products were launched in 15 high-end supermarkets in Hong Kong throughout December and January.

Once tested on those markets, New World Currents plans to launch them in mainland China in much larger volumes.

The Chilean joint venture in China is also doing a project an Alibab-backed e-commerce company specializing in seafood. It is developing new products to be launched soon for e-commerce.

“We will introduce new added-value products for internet sales. We will do promotion and test customers’ taste, as well as teach them how to cook and eat the salmon,” Campos said.

He pointed out that Chinese eat salmon mainly as sashimi, while this product was frozen, and customers had to be educated on how to cook it.